John Constable, IHEEM President from 1981-83, has died, aged 92. Born in September 1919 in Lancashire, his family moved to Dover, where he attended Dover Grammar School.
Leaving school in 1937, he initially worked as an articled pupil to the Borough Engineer and Surveyor at Dover. In 1939, at the outbreak of war, he joined the Royal Engineers, where he was soon commissioned. He volunteered to go to Finland in 1940, but was sent to India and the Far East, returning home in 1945 as a Major, having attended Staff College, and was demobbed in 1946. After leaving the army he returned to civil engineering, and completed his studies by correspondence course, joining the National Health Service in 1955, initially in Oxford, before moving to the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board three years later as regional engineer. He subsequently recognised that the NHS lacked specialised training facilities or schemes of the kind available in the Post Office for telecommunications staff, and suggested that engineering in the NHS required similar specialised facilities. David Hughes, then chief engineer at the Ministry of Health, took up the suggestion, and an advisory committee was formed, with John Constable as a member, to advise the Minister. The committee was delighted when, after a long search, the premises at Falfield (Eastwood Park) became available, and the Hospital Engineering Training Centre was opened there. In 1974 John Constable was promoted to Regional Works Officer, bringing responsibility for a staff of several hundred architects, engineers, and surveyors, and an annual expenditure of over £50 million. He was also a member of the Regional Management Team accountable for all aspects of the NHS in the five counties around Birmingham, with a population of over five million people, and 220 hospitals. He retired, aged 62, to Pershore in Worcestershire, shortly before a further NHS reorganisation took place, and his services to the NHS were recognised by his appointment as OBE in 1968, and his subsequent promotion to CBE in 1976. John Constable was married to his childhood friend, Vera, in 1940, a few days before being sent to India, and the couple did not see each other again until April 1 1945. They celebrated their 71st wedding anniversary in December 2010. He is survived by his wife, their two children, David and Susan, and two granddaughters, Clare and Sarah.
